“Definitely not,” she agreed.
He turned his head slightly, looking down at the pink flowers. “Do you think she’s looking down on us?”
“Nah,” Ava said, resting her cheek against his chest. “I’m one hundred percent sure that Shayna is somewhere enjoying an endless summer, eating strawberry ice cream, and playing with the biggest dollhouse she’s ever seen.”
“I hope so,” he said quietly.
Ava took his hand, pulled him gently away. “Buy me breakfast?”
“That’s right, you’re unemployed now,” he said as he followed her down the hill toward the subway. “I’ll probably be buying everything. Hope you like street meat.”
“Oh, about the job thing—”
Ava linked her fingers in his and started to tell him all about her new job offer with the New York Times. Luc mostly listened, but he couldn’t resist sneaking a glance over his shoulder.
He wasn’t the sentimental type to imagine he saw the fluttering of angel wings or anything.
But he could have sworn he heard the sound of a little girl’s laughter…
It takes a sweet waitress named Maggie to catch a crook—and capture the heart of Luc’s brother, Captain Anthony Morretti—in the next sizzling novel of New York’s Finest…
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Steal Me.
CHAPTER ONE
For Captain Anthony Moretti, three things in life were sacred:
(1) Family.
(2) The NYPD.
(3) The New York Yankees.
And on this breezy, September Sunday morning, two out of these three things were making him crazy. Not in the good way.
“What do you mean, you don’t want to talk about it?” his father barked, leaning across the table to help himself to one of Anthony’s pieces of bacon.
Maria Moretti’s hand was deft and practiced—the mark of a mother of five—as she swiftly swatted the bacon out of her husband’s fingers. “The doctor said you were supposed to take it easy on the bacon!”
“I am taking it easy. This is Anthony’s bacon,” Tony clarified, rubbing the back of his hand.
“Is it?” Anthony muttered, glancing at the now empty plate. “I don’t seem to remember actually getting to eat any of it.”
His youngest brother stabbed a piece of fruit with his fork and waved it in Anthony’s face. “Cantaloupe?”
Anthony gave Luc a withering look. He could appreciate that his baby brother felt man enough to get a side of fruit with his Sunday brunch, but Anth would stick to potatoes and fatty pig products, thanks very much.
“I think I’m going to hurl,” his other brother, Vincent, said to no one. “Shouldn’t have gotten the side of pancakes. Too old for this shit.”
Anthony felt the beginnings of a headache.
Item number one on his priority list (family) was also his number one cause of his frequent please, God, take me away to a deserted tropical island prayer.
But there was no tropical island. Just the same old shit.
For every one of Anthony’s thirty-six years, Sundays had looked exactly the same. All the Morettis filed obediently into their pew at St. Ignatius Loyola Church on the Upper East Side of Manhattan for ten o’clock Mass.
Breakfast always followed, always at the same diner, although the name had changed a handful of times over the year.
The sign out front currently read The Darby Diner, named after…nobody knew.
But the Morettis had never cared what it was called. Or why it was called that. As long as the coffee was hot, the hash browns crispy, and the breakfast meats plentiful, they were happy.
Granted, the greasy-spoon food of the Darby Diner was a far cry from the Morettis’ usual fare of home-cooked Italian meals, but Anthony was pretty sure they all secretly loved the weekly foray into pure Americana cuisine. Even his mother didn’t seem to mind (much) so long as her family was all together.